When The Wheels Fall Off
by Duck Life
Summary: Beckett arrives a moment too late while Lockwood is torturing Ryan and Esposito, and Ryan's life is changed forever. Please R&R! Multichap. Canon couples.
1. Chapter 1

"Shoot out one of his kneecaps," ordered Lockwood. Ryan felt himself being yanked back, thrown against the cold floor. His spine slammed against the cement, and he was no longer looking down into the black water but up at the barrel of a gun. Then everything got jumbled up. He heard a gunshot, close-range, right above him. Three more. Esposito yelling, "No!" He knew what he heard, but the order in which he heard it all was unclear, because somewhere in the middle of the yelling and gunshots, his left knee exploded. He swore that was what had happened.

He swore.

"NYPD!" someone yelled. "Drop your weapons!" Somewhere in the back of his mind, Ryan felt like he should know that voice, but all he could focus on was the raging pain shooting through his knee and up his leg. It was so painful it made him nauseous. He spat out a mouthful of regurgitated ice water onto the floor. The movement shifted his bleeding leg, sending waves of pain radiating through his body.

"Bastards!" He should have recognized that voice, too, but, impossibly, the pain was getting worse. It scorched until finally, blissfully, everything blurred to black.

* * *

><p>Javier Esposito leaned against a wall deep within the corridors of the hospital, his eyes fixated on one of the fluorescent light panels above his head. He had made a sort of game out of staring at it until he had to blink and then observing the purple and red patterns the light created when he shut his eyes. He was exhausted, and yet the last thing he wanted to do was sleep. If he slept, he'd have nightmares, and his nightmares were always just difficult memories yanked from the depths of his mind. He tended to dream about finding out Ike Thornton was dead, and arriving at Beckett's apartment to find it blown to bits. This night's events were definitely going on the list of things not to think about right before falling asleep.<p>

He wanted to sit down, and yet he couldn't bear to move. He wanted to call someone, talk to someone, anyone- his parents, Lanie- and yet he seemed incapable of speech even without trying. He wanted to see Ryan, and yet he was terrified of what had happened and of what it might lead to.

Beckett walked up then, a Styrofoam cup of hospital coffee clutched in her gloved hand. She extended it to him, an offering, but he just stared down at it as if he had never seen coffee before and wasn't quite sure what her gesture meant. She set it on the floor between their feet without a word and leaned against the wall beside him. They stood there for a while in what he supposed could be called companionable silence. He stopped playing his fluorescent light patterns game and decided to watch her, to see how she was doing. He could tell that she'd been crying- a slight puffiness in her eyes, tearstains streaked across her cheek, nose raw and red- but that didn't surprise him as it might have on another day. He'd only seen her cry once before, and today had been as emotional and as heartbreaking as that occasion had been.

"It's not your fault, you know," she said quietly after what must have been several long minutes without speaking. She sounded as if she were reading a script to him, but maybe it was just the words. They were meaningless, false, and he knew that he had heard them before. They were lies.

"Yeah, it is," he said without looking at her. He didn't sound defensive or argumentative, just acceptant. He was to blame, and he was willing to take full responsibility. He was about to say something else, but it caught in his throat as he relived the screams of his partner, the utter vulnerability and agony with which his best friend had writhed on the floor after Lockwood's man had shot him. Esposito coughed, clearing his throat. "You know what I said?" he asked, turning to face Beckett. "You know what I said that made him so angry?" She shook her head, unwilling to say anything. "I pretended like I was going to tell him everything- what the cops knew. And instead I… I made a crack about his mom." He kicked the Styrofoam cup of coffee across the floor and watched as the dark coffee seeped across the tile.

"It's not your fault," she repeated. She sounded a little more bitter this time, a little more insistent.

"The hell it is," he said. "I could've said something else, I could've kept quiet and let them keep shoving him in that fucking water. Yeah, he would've passed out, but then he'd wake up and he'd be fine. He'd probably come away with a cold for a few weeks, but he'd get over it. You know what this is gonna do to him? You know how _this _is going to affect him? And it wouldn't have even happened if I'd just-"

"You know what, if anyone's to blame it's me!" she snapped, anger bubbling up through her quiet sadness. "Are you completely forgetting why you two were dragged out there, why you had to go through that? It would've- _should _have- been me. It was my case. If I hadn't have gone crazy and kept my head with Simmons-"

"No, _I'm _the one who should've kept my head, in the warehouse," he interrupted. "I mouthed off and now he has to pay for-"

"What are you doing?" Beckett and Esposito turned when they heard the soft voice breaking into their argument. There was Jenny, tears running down the sides of her face as if she wasn't aware of them, staring at them as if they had gone insane. "Why are you trying to blame yourselves, why are you trying to blame _anybody _but the monsters who did this to Kevin?"

"I'm sorry," said Esposito quickly, avoiding looking at her. Beckett said nothing, just stood there with a slightly embarrassed expression. Jenny sniffed involuntarily, swiping her hands across her face, and then walked into the hospital room in front of her.

* * *

><p>Jenny had only seen Kevin in the hospital once before, a few months ago after he'd been attacked by a serial killer. That night, he had been standing in the corner of the room, looking annoyed and fighting off a headache. Tonight, he was stretched out precariously on the cot, as if he were a fragile doll. His eyes were shut, and his eyelids were flickering slightly, begging to be lifted up as she entered the room. She took a seat in the pale red rolling chair beside the bed and reached for his hand from where it hung over the side of the bed.<p>

Ryan's head jerked up when he felt her fingers, as though he had been half-asleep, and the sight of his blue eyes was enough to break Jenny down. The tears returned from their brief hiatus, rolling down in fat drops and staining her skirt with dark circles. "Don't cry," he whispered hoarsely, stretching his free hand across the bed clumsily to smear the area beneath her eyes. "Please don't cry. Jenny, I'm okay." She tried to stifle her sobs, shaking herself and scattering clinging teardrops to the floor.

"You're not okay," she said thickly. "Don't lie to me, Kevin. I talked to the doctor. He told you…" Ryan nodded slowly, as if he'd wanted to postpone this moment.

"I can't walk," he confirmed. She could hear the solemn finality in those words. It wasn't a temporary thing, like he was tired from jogging and sat on the couch, asked her to bring him a glass of juice from the refrigerator because he couldn't walk anymore. It was a sentence- he couldn't walk today, or tomorrow, or for the rest of his life. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that it was wrong to be crying, to be grieving. His kneecap had been shot out. It's happened, time to deal with the consequences. Time to carry on, to move along, to keep breathing. It just wasn't that easy.

"Kevin," she whispered. The tears kept flowing, and she buried her face in the pillow beside his head. His breath hitched, and he wrapped an arm around her, held her close to him, and wished for some kind of escape, some way to go back and reverse what had happened. He wasn't even thinking about what came next- how his whole life would change, how he would never run down a sidewalk again. He was primarily concerned with the wrenching cries spilling out of his fiancée, and what he wanted more than anything in the world was for her to feel better.

"Could've been worse," he murmured into her hair. "Could've been worse." He carried her hand to his chest, placing it over his heart. Jenny shuddered, then calmed, letting the tears slow and stop. They laid there for a long time, not speaking, just breathing in synchronization and thinking about anything but the future.

* * *

><p>Esposito was still leaning against the wall beside his partner's hospital room when Jenny came back out. She looked peaceful, but in a depressing sort of way, he thought. Like she wasn't stressed, but also wasn't light-hearted, just empty and peaceful. "He wants to talk to you," she said, leaving the door open. He waited until she had started walking towards the waiting room before going in.<p>

"Hey," said Esposito, walking further into the room. He tried not to look at the twisted form of Ryan's useless leg as he sunk into the chair Jenny had just vacated. "How you holding up?" Ryan blinked wearily, glancing up at Esposito as if he had only just realized that his partner had entered the room.

"I thought she was going to leave me," he murmured, a little breathless.

"What?"

"Jenny," said Ryan. "I thought she was going to come in here and say goodbye." Esposito stared at him, caught between sickly awed at how much Ryan's injury was already affecting him and wondering whether the anesthetic the doctors had used on him had left him brain-damaged. He'd seen Jenny and Ryan together, and he knew it would take much more than a handicap to split them up. "I mean, who would want to marry a guy that can't even stand up?"

"Bro," he laughed, though it was more relief than humor, "do you know anything about women?"

"No," he admitted truthfully.

"Neither do I," Esposito sighed. He thought about Lanie, about how he was still keeping that one secret from Ryan. He felt immensely guilty, realizing that Ryan might have died tonight in the midst of a lie. Esposito wanted to tell him everything, to push aside petty worries about relationships in a workplace because they weren't even close to important anymore. And yet, it wasn't at all the right time to be discussing his own endeavors. Ryan was contemplating enormous changes in every aspect of his life. How could he even imagine bringing up his new girlfriend?

"What are you thinking?" Esposito asked after a long silence. "Really." He didn't want to hear Ryan brush him off and say he was fine, he wanted to know the truth. He wanted to sympathize, not that he expected to be good at it.

"You don't want to know," Ryan promised him, staring down at the lump of his leg and wondering whether he might be able to shift it.

"I do," Esposito assured him.

"It's not optimistic," said Ryan.

"I didn't expect it to be."

"It's not funny, either." He said it as if Esposito had been hoping for some amusing commentary, or a hilarious spin on the terrible night. Granted, they usually had something to laugh about even when they were standing over a dead body. But this wasn't just a case or a corpse, it was an ending. Of what, neither of them was quite sure yet, but it was an ending nevertheless.

"We were just tortured," Esposito reminded him. "I'm not looking for humor." Ryan sighed.

"I'm thinking… this is it." The words were blunt, short yet full of meaning. "The end of my life as I know it, and I'm never going to be as happy as I was before tonight." That, coming from the man who walked into work at six on a Monday morning to fill out a stack of paperwork with a huge grin on his face, shook Esposito.

"Wow," he said. "That's… bleak."

"I know," said Ryan. He sounded so acceptant of his fate, and that bugged Esposito. He should be furious, tormented, yelling about the unjust universe. It would have made much more sense than the calm expression he wore and the even tone of voice he spoke in. It was the serenity, the quiet state of tranquil acceptance in both Ryan and Jenny that really messed with Esposito's head.

"I want you to know that… that I'm here for you." God, he was beginning to sound like the _Friends _theme song. "If you ever need someone to talk to, or you just want someone to scream at, I can be that guy." He was prepared to be Ryan's punching bag, if the peaceful attitude ever fell through and he gave in to rage. Better him than Jenny, Esposito thought.

"Thanks," said Ryan, "but I don't need someone to scream at. You know that's not how I deal with anger." Okay, so maybe the peacefulness was going to continue indefinitely.

"You gonna write about it in your diary?" asked Esposito, trying to lighten the mood. That was what they did, they lightened the mood. When they had a dead woman lying on the floor, bleeding out from three stab wounds in the chest and Ryan and Esposito could see that everyone was looking a little somber, they cracked a joke. They played the comic relief guys, and they were happy with that role. They both knew that was what they really needed right now- something to take their minds of Ryan's injury, something to distract them, something to make them smile.

"It's not a diary, it's a blog," he argued, falling right into Esposito's carefully laid trap to bring the lightness back. The banter. They could both feel the edges softening on the traumatic night.

"That's just an electronic diary," Esposito scoffed. "I'm serious, though, you took a bullet for something I said. I'm prepared to wait on you hand and foot, if that's what you need."

"You don't have to do that," said Ryan. It looked like he tried to shrug, but at the angle he was lying it looked more like he was just twitching his shoulders. "I mean, I guess you could push my wheelchair when I-"

"Wheelchair?" He hadn't known it, but Esposito had been subconsciously waiting for the final nail to be driven in that would make it all real to him, that would really define his ultimate reaction, and that was it.

"Yeah," said Ryan. "I… yeah. A wheelchair."

Esposito knew that Ryan needed him, that it would be better to just stay in the room and talk, to provide the comic relief that they both needed. Ryan needed him to be there, to talk through everything and provide the simple comfort that only a partner could.

But Esposito couldn't stay there, not at the moment, because although he might have acted fine, he was affected too. "I need to go talk to… Beckett," he muttered, avoiding looking at Ryan. "I'll, um… I'll see you later." He left the room, avoiding looking at Ryan's slightly disappointed, slightly pitied expression.

As soon as Esposito shut the door, he realized that Lanie was standing there, waiting for him. Gratefully, exhausted, and ready for the day to end, he sunk into her arms and let everything wash over the both of them.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Happy Easter everyone! (For fun, go count the number of times any form of egg has appeared on Castle! There's a lot.)**

At the moment, the dark grains in the wood of Captain Montgomery's desk were more interesting to Ryan than the words his boss was saying. The lines seemed random, arching and warping into circles in several places. And yet, despite the obvious lack of consistency, he sensed a pattern, an underlying order and reason to the chaos.

Or maybe he was just making that up, the same way he'd been searching for some kind of pattern in his life for the past few days. Jenny had rolled him into work that morning, and he'd spent the whole day helping Esposito with the post-incident report on their kidnapping, until a few minutes ago when Montgomery had called him into his office.

"Ryan, I hate to do this," he said.

"Then don't," Ryan replied, wincing when he realized he'd used such a sullen, rude tone with his superior. He thought about apologizing, but decided that might make it more awkward.

"You don't belong here," Montgomery said bluntly. "I'm sorry, but we're in the police. Physical activity-"

"I won't leave the precinct," he promised, desperation coating his voice as he bargained. "I'll stay here all day and do everything I _can _do. Paperwork, theory. I can organize the whiteboard." He was aware that he sounded pathetic (and felt it too, with his leg propped up in front of him, utterly useless) but these necessary tasks that he had always seemed boring to him before were suddenly irresistible. "I could interrogate suspects," he suggested.

"Ryan, you've been in this job long enough to know that posture is important in the box," he said. "You think a suspect is going to take you seriously if you roll in there like this?"

"Don't make me go home," he pleaded, reduced to begging. "I need this. I need the normalcy and the precinct. I'll start looking for another job. I could get a teaching degree," he said, knowing full well that he didn't want to become a teacher. "Just let me work here until then. I'm not asking to be paid." Not that he and Jenny couldn't use the money, but they'd be able to make it by minus his small salary for a while.

"You remember the incident with Coonan last year," he said, as if anyone could forget. "Just because it's not field work, the precinct isn't the safest place."

"Then I'll deal with something like that when it happens," Detective Ryan said fiercely. This wasn't just a job, it was his passion. This was what he wanted to do, and he didn't want anything to keep him from doing it.

"Fine," Montgomery sighed, giving in. Ryan was a good detective. He didn't want to lose him, but he was also reluctant to go against protocol. It would be different if it were temporary, like the time Esposito had to wear a neck brace. But this was permanent, a fact of which they all had to keep reminding themselves. "You don't leave the precinct, and don't go into the interrogation room without Esposito."

"Okay," he nodded. "Thank-you, sir." He turned awkwardly, still getting used to the wheelchair, and pushed himself out of Captain Montgomery's office.

* * *

><p>Esposito sat at his desk, staring numbly at the security footage in front of him. He'd agreed to screen it in real-time for a case that Beckett and Castle had started working on that morning. He wanted an excuse to sit still for a few hours and let his eyes glaze over, keeping his mind empty. It was easier not to think.<p>

"Hey," said Ryan, slapping a hand on the desk to announce his presence. Esposito jerked out of his stupor, glancing up and once again forcing himself not to shudder at the sight of his partner, broken and trapped in a wheelchair.

"Hey," he said. His voice sounded rough, his throat scratchy. He coughed and paused the security footage, spinning in his chair to face Ryan. "Hey," he said more clearly.

"So Captain says I can stick around," he said. He sounded as if he were trying to be nonchalant- after all, the whole point of his staying at the precinct was to get back to normal- but the events of the past couple of days were too turbulent and earthshaking for any nonchalance, at least not now. Ryan couldn't walk, and it was going to take a lot longer than a week for that to blend into anything like normal.

"Good," said Esposito. He didn't really know what to say. He wanted to comfort Ryan, he wanted to make everything okay. He wanted to reverse time and stop this from ever happening, but he'd already come to terms with the fact that nothing would change this. One second in that warehouse had shaped a lifetime of sitting in the corner, crippled. Of course, that was the way it usually meant. The enormous changes only took a second, it was the subtle, less traumatizing ones that took a long time. "It's just not fair," he sighed.

Ryan knew immediately what he was talking about. "Fair?" he said. "Esposito, in a fair world, we're both out of a job. In a fair world, there would be no murders. In a fair world, we'd never get our hearts broken and we'd never get hurt. We'd never learn anything."

"Wish we all lived there," he muttered.

"Well, we don't," said Ryan. "We live in this one, where people die every day over money and caddy things and people get stepped on and clobbered and crippled and heartbroken. But you know, it's the world we live in and we have to try to make a home out of it. Otherwise, we're just… homeless."

There he went again, thought Esposito, being all poignant and mature, as if he were above everything that had happened to him. It was growing sickening. "I need to finish watching this," said Esposito, gesturing to the computer screen. "I'll talk to you later."

"Yeah," said Ryan. There he went again, thought Ryan, being all distant. "Talk to you later."


	3. Chapter 3

"_There is always this kind of reaction after an amputation. Always." – All Quiet On The Western Front_

Ryan sat in the bullpen, in his wheelchair, staring at the unmoving elevator doors. It had been over an hour since his team had departed to track down some drug dealer whose fingerprints had been discovered on a victim's coat, and they still weren't back. He tried not to feel sorry for himself- after all, this was what he had wanted, and it had taken a lot of begging to get him here. Damn it, though, what was the point of _not_ feeling sorry for himself? He couldn't even cross the room without his chair. He wondered idly how much time it would take him to escape if his desk caught on fire.

"Ryan?" He glanced up to see Lanie standing across the room, the stairs door swinging shut. She looked concerned, but there was no pity in her eyes. Mentally he thanked her for that. Despite what he thought about feeling sorry for himself, he didn't think he could take it anymore from other people.

"Hey," he said. "I was just doing…" He glanced at his desktop- empty. For the first time in his career he had nothing with which to occupy himself. "Nothing."

"I was thinking," she started, "Perlmutter's home sick, and it's kind of quiet down in the morgue. You wanna hang out there for awhile?"

He smiled. So there was pity- just a bit. She might not even realize it, or she was doing a great job of hiding it. "Sure," he said, rolling past her to the elevator.

For one bizarre sitcom-y moment as the doors slid shut, he thought about what could theoretically happen if he and Lanie were alone in a room together. Then he realized, even if there were a chance in Hell that he'd cheat on Jenny, and with his best friend's girlfriend, they were going to be in the morgue. The dead bodies would be more than enough to kill the mood.

Spending time with Lanie made Ryan realize how good a detective she would have been. She got him talking, about things he hadn't even admitted to Esposito. How he would wake up and panic, remembering that he couldn't walk, how his sister Karen was staying with him and Jenny to help out, how he dreamed about running and woke up with tears in his eyes.

It was while she was comparing sections of a victim's brain that Esposito showed up, clutching a bloody wound on the side of his head. "Hey."

"What the hell happened?" Ryan and Lanie said in unison. Lanie washed her hands and immediately began dabbing at his head with a wet cloth, trying to force him into a chair.

"Beckett and Castle were chasing our guy down an alley, I ducked into a building to follow his buddy," Esposito explained. "He jumped out behind me, slammed me into a wall." Lanie sighed, almost exasperated, and continued to clean his head wound. "Ow," he complained, "that stings."

Ryan backed away, towards the elevator, deciding to let Lanie tend to his partner. "You complain a lot more than my normal patients," he heard her say as the elevator opened.

* * *

><p>Ryan had just gotten back to his desk when Castle approached him. "Hey," he greeted. Castle nodded in response.<p>

"We should talk," he said, settling into the chair beside Ryan's desk. Ryan looked up, confused. Castle hadn't been there when he'd woken up at the hospital- at some point while he was in surgery, Castle had gone home to be with his family. That was partially the reason why Ryan still somewhat associated the writer with his pre-injury life. He was the only person who had yet to say anything to him pertaining to the kneecap or the chair.

"Okay," said Ryan, wondering if he should be apprehensive. Of course, there was always the chance this had nothing to do with him, that Castle needed someone to talk to about Beckett and his all-too-obvious feelings for her.

"I know a guy." Alright, not about Beckett. "He can get you a good prosthetic. Money's not an issue, I'll-"

"Castle." Ryan held up a hand, stopping him from continuing. He knew Castle was rich, and that he was generous, and he felt moved that his friend would do so much for him. But he knew that he couldn't accept, that he didn't _want _to. "Thank-you, but even with a good prosthetic I'll never be able to do real cop work again." He glanced down at his left leg. "And I know that it would still be better than this wheelchair, but with the chair it feels…" He sighed, doubtful that he would be able to admit it. "It feels temporary, like I'll get better. And some part of me knows that's not true, but at the moment I'm frozen. Maybe in a year or something, when I wake up, I'll think about it. But right now… I really think I just need to believe that I can get back to normal."

Castle nodded like he understood, but really he didn't. How could he? "Okay." He stood up and walked away, an unspoken agreement between them that Castle wouldn't say anything about how Ryan felt to anyone else. Ryan wondered for a moment why he was keeping so many things from Esposito and sharing them with everyone else.

Esposito walked into the bullpen then, the scrape on his head heavily bandaged. He was making his way over to his desk when Captain Montgomery stepped out of his office and gestured to him. "Esposito, can I see you in my office?" With a nod, he swerved directions and followed the Captain into his office, leaving Ryan alone at his desk yet again.

* * *

><p>Half an hour later, Javier Esposito stepped outside of the Captain's office and leaned against the doorframe. He felt exhausted, and not just from the chase and the head wound. He was drained from his conversation with Montgomery. He had bad news- if there were such a thing anymore- and he had to give it to Ryan.<p>

"Captain says I need a new partner," he sighed without greeting. He collapsed into the chair Castle had recently vacated, unable to meet Ryan's eyes.

"Oh," said Ryan. The topic hung in the air, neither of them able to find the words to discuss it. Ryan paused, trying to think of what to say. "Well, that'd probably be for the best-"

"I'm not getting a new partner," he argued. "I don't need one. I've already got a partner."

"I can't even leave the precinct," Ryan pointed out.

"Then… then neither will I," announced Esposito. He squared up his shoulders like a stubborn child. "I'll stay here with you and do paperwork all day." He picked up a file folder as if to prove his point, squared off the pages, and set it back down.

"Look," said Ryan, "I'm the one that's handicapped, not you. You can get out of here, chase criminals, dodge bullets. I agree with the Captain, if you're going out and doing all that, I don't want you doing it alone."

"I've got Beckett and Castle," said Esposito, shrugging.

"They're each other's partners," he reminded Esposito. "You need your own." It was true, but Esposito refused to believe it. It was easier to refuse to believe everything that was going on than to accept the hard truth.

"_You're_ my partner," he said fiercely. "With you 'til the wheels fall off, remember?"

Ryan sighed and looked down at his mangled knee, and at his own, literal set of wheels. "Javi, I can't walk," he said. His voice was soft. Broken. "The wheels are off."

They sat there, frozen in a moment of loss painted with wisps of nostalgia, and then it was broken by the sound of Beckett's heels clacking on the floor as she left for her weekly visit to Lockwood.


	4. Chapter 4

"_That's what we did! We dreamed about the perfect wedding, and the perfect place, with the perfect four-tiered wedding cake, with the little people on top." – Monica, from __Friends_

"_Don't you want to share the guilt?" – Kate Nash_

Jennifer twisted the rubber cord of the phone around her finger, reflecting briefly over how long it had been since she'd used a phone with a cord. Everything was wireless now.

Beyond the glass, Lockwood- John Doe – remained silent, as he'd been since she had started talking, the phone pressed to his ear. He didn't leave, though, so she knew that he was listening. Besides, she didn't really want to hear his voice anyway.

"We're getting married," she said. Not once had she wondered why exactly she was putting herself through this, though she had no idea. She wasn't curious about her own subconscious reasoning. All she knew was that she was getting stronger with each word, if not more at peace. "You didn't know that. How could you, _why_ would you? I mean he was just a cop. Just a tool you could use to get your information." She didn't sound accusatory- her voice was void of emotion. It should be; after all, she was just stating facts. "I keep forgetting and then remembering that we won't dance together at our wedding." She smiled a little thinking about swinging in Kevin's arms, but reality was making that smile more wistful than joyful. "I kind of feel like I've been waiting my whole life for my wedding dance and now it's just… gone."

Kevin didn't know she was there. He probably would have tried to stop her if he did. She should've been stopped, really. It had to be a bad idea, spilling out her hopes and dreams to an incarcerated murderer. It was pointless. There was no making him feel remorseful, she wasn't that naïve. And she wasn't hoping to learn anything from him, nor was she very much interested in sharing all of this personal information with him. She just had to keep doing it.

It was like typing an e-mail you don't intend to send, just to get all of your anger and frustration out, only she was delivering it in person. And her anger and frustration were indeed mellowing out. Still, she knew that talking to Lockwood was a bad idea. She just couldn't stop- it was like an addiction. Once she began, she kept going, revealing all her private secrets like she was writing in a diary. Jenny hadn't even told Kevin these things before, and especially wouldn't now.

"We'd step with the music, not really hearing it, and his arms… his arms would wrap around me…" She found herself blinking away tears over an impossible fantasy. She had no desire to cry in front of this man. "And then we'd go on our honeymoon. We'd get to that hotel in Hawaii and he would pick me up and carry me through the door." It was never going to happen, though. Because of this man, with the bloodshot eyes and stubble-coated chin, she would never live out her perfect wedding.

"Mr. Lockwood, I'm a strong believer in karma," she said. "These people in here with you have killed, but you? You tortured him, and now he has to live with that for the rest of his life. Hal Lockwood, or whatever the hell your name is, I hope this place is your torture. I hope when you get to Hell, it will feel like a relief."

She knew she'd damaged her calm, but she didn't care. It was how she felt. As she dropped the phone back into its cradle and stood up, she realized that she'd never before felt as angry as she did now, at this man. Kevin's injury had changed her. Jenny didn't know whether to be grateful that she was able to articulate exactly how she felt, or horrified.

* * *

><p>As she left, the tears finally beginning to blur into her vision, she bumped into Beckett. Kate looked surprised, Jenny being the last person she'd expected to see there. "Jenny?"<p>

"Oh, God… Kate, I'm sorry, I just- I had to…" She flushed, her earlier near-perfect verbalization evaporating quickly.

"It's okay," said Kate, putting a hand on her shoulder to comfort her, thinking of Castle slamming his fist into Lockwood's face over and over again, all because there was a possibility that he might shoot her. "I understand."

Jenny nodded, teary, and ran out the door. Beckett ran her fingers through her hair, feeling the stress and difficulty of the week sliding through her hands. Not leaving her alone completely, just shifting around. She shoved her problems to the back of her mind and put on a blank expression, straightened her shoulders, and walked in to see Lockwood.

He was quiet- he was always quiet. Silent, actually. She just stared him down and asked the same question, once again. Silence.

However, unlike the other times, he actually spoke as she stood up to leave. "You want to find your mother's killer, don't go looking down dark alleys and abandoned buildings," said the man who wasn't really Hal Lockwood. "Look up. Look at the people at the center of it all, the people in charge."

She stared at him, confused, and then walked away without another word.

* * *

><p>Castle sat at Beckett's desk, flipping through <em>Heat Wave<em> and trying to remember who the killer was. It bothered him that, though he'd written the book himself, he'd entirely forgotten.

"Hey." Beckett sunk into her chair, putting her head in her hands. It was odd behavior. Castle dropped the book and leaned forward.

"Something wrong?" he inquired. She sighed, glaring at him. He hoped her conversation with Lockwood hadn't upset her.

"No, everything's absolutely fine," she spat caustically. "I feel perfectly okay. Happy, even." Castle swallowed, worried now that he'd done something to upset her. He quickly ran through all the things he had done in the past three days that might have upset her, but could think of nothing that bad. He hadn't even been bothering her with crazy theories lately. She sighed again, her hands crawling upward to cover her eyes. Without looking at him, she said, "You know, that second time I kissed you, I wasn't even acting."

"…Oh." Was there any other response to that?

"I just got so caught up in the moment, in the kiss, in the fact that it was _you_, and… I forgot what I was supposed to be doing. I lost myself." She spoke in a monotone, unable to meet his eyes. He still didn't know why she was confessing this, and why it made her so guilty. Maybe, he thought, she'd broken up with Josh.

"Beckett," he murmured, "what-"

"Because it's my fault!" she said, removing her hands from her face and looking up at him. Her eyes were wide, frantic, but she wasn't crying. "Ryan's knee, it's my fault and if I just kept kissing you! I could have taken out that guard long before I did, but I forgot where I was, I forgot what I was doing, I just… I was only thinking about myself. And you. And now, he's… he's…" She slapped her desk, for lack of any better punctuation.

"We saved them," he reminded her softly. "Lockwood was the one that ordered him to be shot. And it would have been a lot worse if we hadn't gotten there."

"It would have been a lot better if we'd gotten there earlier," she said, bitter.

"There was-"

"Look, it was our big make-out session that got him into this!" she snapped. When he didn't answer, she put her head back in her hands, hating herself for feeling sorry for herself.

"Kate." Castle was much closer now, leaning towards her. She glanced up, blinking to clear her vision. "They would have done a lot worse." She bit her lip, knowing he was right but refusing to feel better about it. "They would have tortured him until he couldn't even think, and Esposito- they would have made him watch."

She nodded, carefully, as if the shaking of her head might dislodge some vital information in her brain. He moved forward, unsure if it was the right moment, and wrapped his arms around her, comforting. She leaned into the embrace, welcoming the comfort and fighting off the lingering guilt.

* * *

><p>"You two need to get back together." Esposito looked up from the murder board to see Beckett, her eyes narrowed at him.<p>

"We're not a couple," he replied, irritated, moving his gaze back to the whiteboard and focusing intently on the timeline.

"No, you're more than that," she huffed. He tried to walk away then, so she followed him around the back of the board. "He needs you, Esposito, you can't just keep ignoring each other!" He led her to the cappuccino machine and started fixing himself a cup of coffee.

"I'm not talking to you about this," he said with defiance.

"You're right," she said. "You're talking to Ryan about this."

"No, I'm not," he said, stirring his coffee vigorously.

"Fine," she said. "Don't do it because you're best friends and need to stop acting like somebody died, do it for me."

"For you?"

"Yes," replied Beckett. "I'm sick of the people on my team not acting like partners."

"Well," said Esposito, "we're not partners. Not anymore." He looked away from her as he tossed his wooden stirring stick into the trash. She put a hand on his shoulder, in an extremely rare moment of affection between the two of them.

"You're always going to be partners," she said. "Now go talk to him."

"Okay." He squared up his shoulders and was about to leave when she stopped him.

"First, make me a cappuccino."

* * *

><p>And he would have gone and talked to Ryan, cleared up everything and ended the weird freeze between them, if Captain Montgomery hadn't stopped Esposito and pulled him into his office, where a young man with short brown hair sat in front of the Captain's desk.<p>

"Esposito, this is Detective Keith Hopkins, he just transferred here from the 13th," said Montgomery, taking a seat behind his desk. "Your new partner." Esposito nodded and shook Hopkins' hand, both of them exchanging greetings. "Esposito will introduce you to the rest of his team," said Montgomery to Hopkins.

Esposito remembered doing this with Ryan, walking him around the bullpen and introducing him to Beckett. He never thought he'd be introducing a new partner _to _Ryan. "Ryan, this is Detective Hopkins," he said, gesturing to the man beside him. "Hopkins, this is my p- this is Detective Ryan." They shook hands quickly, skipping over Esposito's slip-up in introductions.

"I think I'm gonna take off," muttered Esposito, turning towards the door. He assumed that Ryan would introduce Hopkins to Beckett and Castle.

"'Night!" called Ryan as he neared the elevator. Esposito turned around, seeing his new partner and old partner conversing. For a moment he wondered if he could just walk out and leave them, not just tonight but forever. Maybe he would've done better to be shot in the knee.

"Goodnight."


	5. Chapter 5

"_Sometimes after a tragedy, two human beings just need to be with each other for no other reason than to show each other some understanding and support… I'm just kidding. We're gonna have sex." – Nathan Fillion, __Castle__ Season 2 Outtakes_

"_Nothing is going to keep you two apart for long." – Regan Tam, __Firefly_

Esposito sat on the couch in his apartment, counting the number of times he saw the second hand on his clock move. So far he'd counted 4,680, but he didn't know how many minutes or hours that translated to. All he knew was he was miserable, and sitting there stewing and purposely avoiding thinking about what was making him miserable was slightly reducing his misery.

There was a knock at the door. He stood, stretched, and walked the few feet to his door. Lanie was behind it, still in her scrubs and holding a bottle of pills. She held it out to him before even saying hello. "Painkillers for your head," she explained. He popped open the top and poured half the contents of the bottle into his hand. She raised an eyebrow, and he grudgingly put all but two of the pills back into the bottle. "I honestly have no idea how you must be feeling," she said, her voice uncharacteristically soft. "And I'm sorry that I can't empathize."

"Don't be sorry," he said, closing the door behind her as she followed him to his small kitchen. "I don't want you to know what this feels like." He tossed the two pills in his mouth and swallowed them without the help of the water Lanie had begun pouring for him. "And I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"I'm here for you, you know," she said, just as unusually soft. "If you ever feel like talking about it, I'll be ready to listen." The words were too similar to the ones he'd said to Ryan in the hospital, to the promise he'd broken several times over. The fact was he wasn't there for Ryan, not when he needed him most. He was breaking down, not even strong enough to pretend that everything was okay.

"I heard somewhere that when you're under torture, you're supposed to have a lifeline," said Esposito, reaching out almost subconsciously and taking Lanie's head in his hands. "It's a memory, a specific hope, for something you'll see when you get through the torture- like your family, or friends, or even a cold beer. A mental image to remember whenever you feel like you might break." He kissed her like he would die if he didn't.

"I thought of you," he said, their foreheads touching. "When they were drowning him and I couldn't do a damn thing, I thought about you and how disappointed you'd be if I gave in and told them what they wanted." A shudder passed through him. "You're my lifeline," he said. "If you… if you _break_, I can't… I can't…" He was shaking, his hands knotted in her hair. She leaned up and kissed him, reassuring him that she was alright.

Lanie broke Esposito's grip on her hair, took his hand, and led him to his bedroom. She'd prove to him that she wasn't in danger of breaking any time soon.

* * *

><p>Approximately 4,680 seconds after Javier Esposito arrived at his apartment, Kevin Ryan left his after ending things with his fiancée, caught a cab, and made his way uptown to the 12th precinct. He was still there when Esposito arrived for work in the morning.<p>

"What are you doing here?" said Esposito upon realizing that Ryan was lying on the break room couch. He sat up quickly, his blanket falling to the floor.

"More comfortable than my desk," he yawned, maneuvering himself into his wheelchair. He stretched out his arms and his good leg, straightened his tie, and smoothed down his hair.

"Did you sleep here?" asked Esposito, folding up the blanket and tossing it to the opposite corner of the room.

"Uh… yeah," admitted Ryan, having some difficulty rolling himself out the door.

"Why?" demanded Esposito from across the room. He worried for a moment that in his condition Ryan had been physically unable to get back to his apartment, but then remembered that Ryan had done so several times before already.

"I didn't want to sleep at home, so I came here instead," he said, clearly wishing that Esposito would drop the subject. He didn't.

"Wha… how did you _get _here?" said Esposito, thoroughly confused. He crossed the room to help Ryan out the doorway.

"Hailed a taxi," he shrugged circuitously. "They have these great little things called handi-cabs. See, it's a play on-"

"Why didn't you want to stay at home?" asked Esposito, spinning him around and realizing that he hadn't said anything since walking into the precinct that wasn't a question. It made sense- he'd found his handicapped best friend sleeping on the couch at work, and he wanted answers.

"Because I… kind of, sort of broke up with Jenny," he muttered, looking away. Esposito had to run the ill-fractured sentence through his head a few times to gain its full meaning- it just seemed so bizarre. "She deserves better," said Ryan in response to Esposito's questioning look. "I can't even walk."

"You're an idiot," said Esposito.

"No," Ryan disagreed, "I'm just meant to be alone. That's my price to pay."

"You know," said Esposito, "you're the person I go to for romantic advice, so I really hate it when you're wrong." He left Ryan at his desk and headed towards the morgue. Maybe he could convince Lanie to talk some sense into Ryan.

"I'm not wrong!" Ryan called after him.

"Really?" said Esposito, turning around. "Think about Jenny right now."

He did. He thought about her hair, her smile, her laugh, how stressed she'd been about planning their wedding, how much more stressed she'd been after his injury. He thought about the time they spent a night dipping all the food in their kitchen in cheese fondue just to see what did and didn't taste good.

"Oh My God, I have to call her."

"There you go," muttered Esposito as he stepped into the elevator.

"She didn't answer!" Ryan said frantically, fumbling with his cell phone.

"Call again." The doors slid shut.

* * *

><p>Jenny had never met Lanie, aside from perhaps glimpsing her on the night Ryan was in the hospital, so it was a very odd scene that Esposito walked in on in the morgue, to see Jenny sobbing into his girlfriend's shoulder and Lanie awkwardly trying to pat her on the back in comfort.<p>

"Jenny?" he said carefully. It was just coming to him that during the length of his save-the-world elevator ride, not once had it occurred to him that Jenny might be in the morgue. He had no idea how to handle the situation.

She turned around when she heard his voice, and before he knew what was happening, Jenny had flung herself into his arms and was crying on his shirt. He shot Lanie a curious look over Jenny's shoulder, and she responded with an expression of pure bemusement.

"Kevin's upstairs, trying to call you," he explained to the distraught woman hanging on him. "Go give him a good slap in the face for me, 'kay?" She started crying even harder. "Or not."

"Jenny," said Lanie, putting a hand on her shoulder and turning her away from Esposito, "he's upstairs. Go sort things out. I'm sure he didn't mean whatever he said or that he'll be okay despite whatever's happened or that he won't be mad at whatever you did or didn't say." Esposito stifled a laugh- it was so rare that he, not Lanie, was the one in the know.

Jenny gulped, nodded, and ran to the elevator.

"So what exactly was that about?" asked Lanie once she was gone. She returned to the methodic task of wiping her table clean while they spoke.

"You weren't able to make anything out?" he asked, leaning against the doorframe. She glared at him.

"All I could understand between the sobbing was that it had something to do with Ryan," she sighed. "Also fondue."

"Well, apparently Ryan tried to leave her because he felt like she shouldn't be stuck with him in this state, and he slept here so- and I'm guessing now- she came here this morning and went straight to the morgue." He frowned, thinking. "Why would she come to the morgue?"

"She was probably looking for you," Lanie said. "It makes sense that you would know how to reach him."

"Yeah," said Esposito, "but why would I be in the morgue?" The room was quiet but for the squeaking as she polished the tables as they thought. Suddenly, Lanie gasped.

"Maybe she knows about us!"

"Don't be ridiculous," he replied. "Ryan doesn't even know, how would she know?"

"Maybe Ryan _does_ know," she theorized.

"Ryan doesn't know anything," he scoffed. He kissed her quickly before going back upstairs, certain for the moment that their secret was safe.

* * *

><p>Hopkins stepped into the bullpen on his first full day of work at the 12th precinct to see Detective Ryan making up with his fiancée in a way that seemed only barely appropriate enough to be tolerated at the precinct, for a limited amount of time. He stepped back, feeling awkward, but Ryan and Jenny heard him and glanced up.<p>

"Sorry if I'm interrupting anything," he said, shifting uncomfortably. Jenny straightened up, blushing.

"No, I was just leaving," she said breezily, all signs of depression completely gone. She kissed Ryan again, and hugged him- like she was pouring herself into it – and then she was gone. Smiling, Ryan rolled his way to his desk. Hopkins unhitched himself from the wall and was making his way towards the desk that Beckett had pointed out to him last night when Esposito walked into the bullpen.

"Morning, Hopkins," he said, nodding to his new partner. "Someone just found a dead body in a Dumpster on East 12th."

"Cool," said Hopkins. "I mean… not cool. That's a bad thing, I just-"

"It's okay," said Esposito. He was relatively new to solving homicides- they all understood what it was like. As long as he didn't act psyched in front of a family, he was fine.

"Hey," said Ryan as Hopkins and Esposito headed towards the elevator, "thanks."

"Anytime, bro," he said, genuinely smiling for the first time in days. Yeah, they were on their way to look at a corpse, and yeah, his partner wasn't quite his partner anymore and was confined to a wheelchair, but somehow he felt like everything was going to be alright.

He was, like most people are when they have this thought, terribly and extremely wrong, which only goes to show that human beings will never be reliably psychic.


	6. Chapter 6

David Zeitz was sprawled out on a tarp beside a Dumpster in an alley, surrounded by cops and CSU, and Sidney Perlmutter was busying himself prodding at the bullet wound in his chest. "What do we got?" asked Esposito, coming up behind him.

"It's a dead body," said Perlmutter slowly without turning around. "Usually what results after someone is shot and killed."

"Is he always like this?" muttered Hopkins to Esposito.

"Only on days that end in y," he replied, kneeling down beside the body. The victim was young, early twenties he guessed, and of average height. His wallet, displaying his ID, was open in an evidence bag beside the ME's feet.

"David Zeitz, twenty-six," said Perlmutter. "He was shot here between ten and one last night, I can get a more definite timeframe once he's back in the morgue." Esposito nodded, standing up and surveying the alley. It was strange being at a crime scene without Beckett – she was busy interrogating a suspect for their other case- and even stranger without Ryan. Well, he decided, he'd have to learn to adjust and adapt. After all, that was what human beings were supposed to be best at.

* * *

><p>Darcy Livingston mopped at her puffy eyes with her already wet sleeve. She was sitting in her cramped apartment, trying to stem the flow of tears unsuccessfully. "You know, I was going to break up with him… today, actually," she said to Detectives Esposito and Hopkins, who were sitting on the couch across from her. "God, does that make me just an awful person?"<p>

"There's no way you could have known," said Esposito, trying to comfort David's girlfriend. He felt awkward sitting in her apartment, attempting to explain what had happened to David. Ryan had always been better at this. "I have to ask, did David have any enemies?"

She shook her head, fighting back another bout of tears. "He didn't even have that many friends," she admitted. "He was a quiet guy, but everyone who knew him liked him." Hopkins nodded and jotted something down on his notepad. "You'll catch him, right?" she asked suddenly, leaning forward, eyes wide. "You'll get the bastard who did this?"

"We'll do our best," said Hopkins. Esposito glanced at him, then returned his gaze to Darcy.

"We will," he promised.

* * *

><p>On their drive back to the precinct, Hopkins was eager to drag some advice out of Esposito about delivering bad news and comforting family members. Esposito just wanted to get back to the twelfth and make himself a cappuccino. "Thanks for covering for me in there," he said. "I'm kinda new at this, and never was good with the families and whatnot. More of a facts guy, y'know?"<p>

"I know," murmured Esposito, looking at the road.

"I mean, I don't want to be tactless," he continued. "Just seems easier if you ask the questions outright. But I guess that's the wrong thing to do, huh?"

Hopkins was beginning to remind him of a dog kept inside too long. He was even bouncing a little in his seat. Esposito made a mental note to steer him away from the cappuccino machine. "Sort of."

"And that whole 'not telling the truth' thing, with the false hope?" said Hopkins. "That surprised me, but I guess you're confident. Maybe 'cause you don't get so many unsolved over here, what with that Nikki Heat you have on your team."

"I didn't give her false hope," said Esposito, turning to look at his partner for emphasis before returning his eyes to the street and the wheel. "We _will_ get this guy. Always do." He believed that. It didn't seem like too difficult a case- definitely not professional, as far as he could tell. He figured they'd find the murder weapon and track down whoever it was licensed to- that was probably their killer. They'd check more thoroughly, of course, but it just seemed like one of those simple cases.

"Man, it's nice to see some confidence," said Hopkins. "No one's like that back at the thirteenth. Especially with that situation about your old partner, how you're all acting like everything's fine-"

"Can you just be quiet?" he finally snapped, avoiding looking at Hopkins. He didn't want to think about Ryan and his knee, and he especially didn't want to hear the situation defined by someone who thought that it was all hopeless. And also, Keith's constant chattering was seriously beginning to annoy him. Silence stretched on for a moment.

"Sorry," said Hopkins. "Guess I crossed a line. I'll watch out for that in the future. We're gonna be partners, I should really keep track of what kinds of things tick you off. That's what's great about a partnership, you just learn all this stuff about the other person, it's great…"

* * *

><p>They got back to the bullpen to see Castle and Beckett clearing off the whiteboard – evidently, they'd solved their case. "Caught the guy?" assumed Esposito, stopping in front of Beckett's desk.<p>

"Yup," said Beckett, squirting the board with Expo cleanser and wiping it clean.

"I broke him," said Castle with a smug expression on his face.

"No you didn't," said Beckett, turning to face him in irritation. She was still holding the squirt bottle full of cleanser, giving the slightly frightening impression of aiming a gun at him. "I did."

"Yeah, well I… loosened him for you," said Castle defensively, idly drawing a smiley face on the now-clean murder board. She glared at him and swiped it off.

"Yeah, great," said Esposito, who hadn't really been listening. He knew it was slightly pathetic, but he needed a break from his logorrhea-inflicted partner. "Hey, Hopkins, why don't you go over our case with these two?"

"Sure," he said excitedly, and Esposito escaped to the break room. "So you're _the _Richard Castle?" Castle glanced up at the sound of his name in the middle of his search to find the red Expo marker that Beckett had hidden- he wasn't done doodling on the murder board.

"The one and only," he said with a grin.

"No, you're not," said Beckett. "There's like five more Richard Castles in the phone book." He looked at her, surprised. "Not that I looked," she added quickly, ducking away to drop the board eraser in a pocket on the back of the board and avoiding looking at them.

"I'm a huge fan of your books," said Hopkins. "You're actually kind of the reason I wanted to transfer here. Can I have your autograph?"

"Tell you what," said Castle, always eager to please a fan, "we're working together now, how about I bring you in a signed copy of _Naked Heat_ tomorrow?"

"Awesome," said Hopkins.

"So," said Castle, turning back to Beckett, "where's the marker?"

"No, Castle," she said like she was chastising a young child, a comparison she found herself making a lot when it came to Castle. "This board stays clean until there's another murder."

"If I go out and kill someone, _then_ can I draw on the board?" he asked. Hopkins chuckled to himself and walked away as they bickered.

* * *

><p>"Yo." Esposito dropped into a rolling chair beside Ryan's desk and slid behind the computer monitor, handing Ryan the cell phone that had been in David Zeitz's pocket. "Can you pull this up on the computer for me?"<p>

"Sure," said Ryan, popping the memory card out of the phone and inserting it into the computer. "So how was your first day in the field with your new partner?"

"Oh, fine," he said, sounding distracted. Ryan sat up to see him glancing over the top of the monitor and then ducking down, very odd behavior.

"Are you hiding from him?" laughed Ryan while he worked, pulling up the memory card on the screen and clicking open folders.

"I'm sitting right here out in the open, not hiding," replied Esposito. "If anything I'm casually avoiding him."

"Recent calls are all normal, look like to his girlfriend and family," muttered Ryan, clicking away. "Why are you avoiding your partner?"

"He's like what would happen if a golden retriever and a Chatty Kathy doll got together and had a kid," said Esposito.

"There's an image," said Ryan. "At least that means he's loyal."

"Yeah, well-"

"Wait, check this out," said Ryan, pulling up the image he'd been looking at and pointing to the screen. There were three memos in the phone- one appeared to be a grocery list, and the other two were strings of seemingly random letters and number.

"Are those phone numbers?" asked Esposito, leaning forward.

"Too many digits," said Ryan. "And there's letters. I think it's some kind of code. I'll run it."

As he fed it through the decoding system on his computer, Esposito said, "You think we should tell Castle? He'd be all over a secret coded message."

"Let's keep it between us and Air Bud for now," said Ryan.

* * *

><p>Less than an hour later, Hopkins and Esposito were across town conversing with David's boss, an account executive for Amazon named Gregory Ritter. Ritter was a small man, but a confident one, which helped him to really fit in behind his expansive desk and made up for his short stature. He was polite to the detectives, and seemed sincerely upset that his assistant had been murdered. No red flags, but Esposito was trained to see everyone as a potential killer.<p>

"Mr. Ritter, do these mean anything to you?" asked Esposito, pushing a piece of paper on which he'd written the two mystery codes across the desk. Ritter stiffened immediately upon reading them.

"Where did you get this?" he asked, suddenly intense, lowering his voice. His tone was nothing close to the pleasantness it had contained before.

"What do they mean?" asked Hopkins.

"They unlock customers' information," he said with a worried breath. "We keep it all private, but these codes reveal them. All the information is kept behind codes like these. These two alone could unlock a little over two hundred customer profiles."

"What does that mean?" asked Hopkins.

"Credit card numbers," said Ritter.

"It means David Zeitz was into something big," said Esposito. "A little too deep."


	7. Chapter 7

Either Darcy's tears had started up again after the past few hours, or they'd just continued- Esposito hadn't bothered asking. She was sitting in the interrogation room, sniffling, as he and Hopkins filled her in on the admission codes.

"So," said Esposito, "why did David have these codes?"

"I don't know," she sniffled, looking anywhere but the table with the codes. "We weren't even that close, I'd only known him a few weeks-"

"You were close enough," said Esposito coolly, leaning forward. His stare was cold and cutting, his fingers tapping impatiently on the table. For the moment, he'd dismissed the fact that she was mourning and frightened. In his mind, she could be David's murderer, and as much as he hated it when people lied to him, he hated even more when murderers lied to him. "What was he trying to do?" She swallowed, her eyes shifting.

"He can't get in trouble," Hopkins reminded her softly. She bit her lip, nodded.

"He was the insider," she said, her voice that of a ghost's. "They needed someone who worked at Amazon, and then they were going to get all the credit card numbers."

"Who's they?" asked Esposito. She shook her head, fresh tears rolling out of the corners of her eyes. "Darcy, your boyfriend is lying in the morgue," he practically yelled. "Quit trying to protect him, tell me who he was working with!"

"Hey," said Hopkins, putting a hand on his shoulder, "cool it, she's upset." Esposito looked at him, surprised, then calmed as he sank back into his chair. He'd gone too far, he realized it immediately, and it had almost nothing to do with Darcy. It was Ryan, finding a way to cope when he himself couldn't, it was Hopkins, acting like Esposito should be psyched his partnership had just ended, Castle and Beckett even, pretending everything was okay. He was upset that everyone seemed to be taking things so much better than he was, and he'd taken it out on a suspect- a friend of the victim's, really.

"I only met the one, but I think there were more," she said. "He'd be there sometimes, at David's, always left when he saw me. Whenever I asked, David said he was helping him out. Money-wise."

"Do you have a name?" asked Hopkins. She shook her head.

"Set her up with a sketch artist," said Esposito. He stacked up the papers with the code on them and stood up. "Let's see if we can figure out who this mystery man is."

* * *

><p>Later on, Hopkins approached Esposito's desk looking sheepish. Esposito couldn't help the comparison he jumped to of a dog who'd gotten into the trash, feeling guilty now that his owner's were home. "Hey, sorry about before," said Hopkins. "I probably shouldn't have challenged your authority, I just felt-"<p>

"It's okay," he shrugged. "I probably did go too far- stress, you know." He sighed, stretched his back. Hopkins was beginning to remind him of Ryan when he'd first come to Homicide- naïve, nervous, wanted to save the world. He hadn't seen enough liars. "Next time, though, try not to call me out in front of a suspect. If you just give me a look."

"I will," promised Hopkins. "Should we have like a password or something? Like, if I say Balderdash-"

"The look's fine," said Esposito quickly. "Just a look."

* * *

><p>Less than an hour later, they had a black-and-white sketch of a beefy Caucasian man with a scar on his chin. Esposito stuck a copy up on the murder board and wrote "John Doe- David's associate" beneath it in erasable marker.<p>

"Hey, it's Skunk," said Ryan, spinning around to check out the whiteboard. He was examining the drawing Esposito had just put up, recognition in his eyes.

"Skunk?" said Esposito.

"Well," amended Ryan, "I'm sure that's not his _real _name-"

"Awful parents," interjected Esposito.

"He used to crop up a lot when I was in Narcotics," Ryan continued. "Drug dealers hired him for protection and intimidation. Never could catch him." Ryan leaned back in his chair, memories of his Narcotics days flicking through his brain.

"Whoever was behind this Amazon scheme must have used Skunk to negotiate with David to hide his identity," Esposito theorized. He took another copy off of his desk and headed towards the elevator. "I'm going to go see if Narcotics has any recent leads on him."

"His name must be really embarrassing if he prefers 'Skunk,'" mused Ryan. "Like Eugene or Atherton."

"Or Kevin," said Esposito, stepping into the elevator. Ryan rolled his eyes and turned back around to study the murder board.

* * *

><p>Vick Gregor, also known as Skunk, was last known to be hanging around a local dealer going by the name of Dragon. When Esposito reported what he'd learned from the Narcotics cops, Beckett interrupted him. "What's the dealer's name?"<p>

"Dragon," he repeated, watching her faraway expression with confusion. "Why?"

"Nothing." Esposito shrugged and carried on, telling her, Castle, Ryan, and Hopkins that "Dragon" operated out of an abandoned Laundromat. Castle was already getting out his Writer vest.

The plan was this: the four of them- Beckett, Castle, Esposito and Hopkins – would go in and take both Dragon and Skunk in for questioning. Of course, Skunk was the one they were really interested in, but his and Dragon's drug problems might be easy to use as a bargaining chip, played correctly. It was a simple plan, and it would take all of ten minutes to get the two men in custody.

Nothing ever went according to plan, of course, and that was what the vests were for.

"Be careful out there," said Ryan to Esposito in a surprising moment of concern as the other filed out the door.

"I will, bro," said Esposito. "Always am." And then he was gone.

* * *

><p>The Laundromat was sagging, derelict, and very obviously no longer in business. It existed in one of the emptiest, dingiest corners of the city, hidden in a dark alley behind years of filth and disuse. The windows were cracked and shattered, the machines were full of rats and mice and other small furry things.<p>

Beckett broke down the door- it didn't take much – and stepped in, gun out. It didn't take more than a couple surveillances for her to realize that the place was completely empty.

They searched all over the back, in every machine, but all they found were the aforementioned rats and mice and other small furry things.

"Dammit," hissed Esposito through his teeth. It never was that easy.


	8. Chapter 8

While Esposito and the others were busy searching the abandoned Laundromat, Ryan was going through Skunk's records-everything he'd been charged with, friends of his, past incidents. He actually remembered some of them. He heard the soft tap of Captain Montgomery's loafers, and then his boss loomed above his desk.

"Hey, Captain," said Ryan, glancing up at him before returning his gaze to the computer screen. "Just checking out our thug." The captain nodded.

"Are you happy, Ryan?" he said, suddenly and unexpectedly. Ryan frowned, contemplating the question. He thought about how much he loved his job. He thought about Esposito, Beckett, and Castle, and about Hopkins. And Jenny.

"I am," he answered, surprising himself. It was true. Despite the horrible crippling life-changing injury, the dead-ended murder they were trying to solve, and the tension between himself, his former partner, and his former partner's new partner, he was happy. He was optimistic. It was reassuring to think that, even after everything that had happened, he'd managed to find his way back to his characteristic optimism.

"That's good," said Montgomery. "We made a deal, and if that deal wasn't benefitting you, then it wouldn't be fair." He leaned against the edge of the desk in a rare moment of concern and camaraderie, and Ryan could see the exhaustion in his eyes. The captain had a tough job, and everyone at the precinct felt he handled it well more than a majority of the time. "I'm proud of you."

"What?" said Ryan.

"What you're doing, coming in here and trying your hardest even after… well…" He glanced at the chair awkwardly. "I don't think I could do it." That was a lie, and Ryan knew it. Roy Montgomery was more than capable of carrying on as a cop even after being kneecapped. If he could walk in here every day even after everything he'd seen, and do his job better than anyone else could, then he could do this. If he could risk caring for everyone at the precinct like they were his own family, even after the many he'd lost, then he could do this, just as well if not better than Ryan did.

"Hey…" said Ryan, realizing what he was looking at. A friend of Skunk's with a criminal record, had just popped up on the screen. Tramm van Horn was on house arrest after attempting to steal Arthur Scherbius' Enigma machine from the National Museum Complex. According to the file, he'd graduated from MIT and had a major knack for computers- the perfect person to have on a team of people trying to steal from Amazon. "I mean, he's on house arrest so obviously not our killer, but definitely worth checking out." He was talking to himself, forming a course of action.

At that moment, Castle, Beckett, Esposito, and Hopkins showed up in the elevator, looking a bit dejected after finding nothing at the Laundromat to convict or even find Vick Gregor/Skunk. "Hey guys," said Ryan, peeking at them over his monitor. "You ready to go out there again?"

* * *

><p>Tramm van Horn's apartment was impeccably clean, no dirty laundry draped over the couches or dirty dishes piling up in the sink. Mountains of DVDs were stacked in organized shelves beside the big TV, and the carpet was recently vacuumed- Beckett theorized that obsessive cleaning was probably what he did now that he couldn't leave the apartment. The place was mostly spotless, but for a few chip crumbs here and there and an unmade bed.<p>

It was also just as empty as the Laundromat. Tramm's ankle bracelet was sitting on the kitchen table, as if to taunt them. "Oh, come on, that's just _mean_," said Esposito, earning an amused glance from Beckett. They searched the rest of the apartment, but there were no signs other than the empty bracelet that he'd done anything illegal in his life.

"Well, that's that," shrugged Beckett. "We'll set up people to guard this place. Let's get back to the precinct."

"And do what?" sighed Esposito. "We don't have any leads."

Beckett smiled back at him and shrugging again, said, "Power of Koosh."

* * *

><p>The morgue where Lanie worked was kept immaculate, everything sanitized whether the last thing to touch it was a bloody corpse or a cup of coffee. It even smelled good, like lemons and soap, fully masking the dead body odor. When Perlmutter wasn't lurking about in there, it was the perfect place for an ME to make out with her secret boyfriend.<p>

"I need to get back to work," sighed Esposito, sounding as if work was the last thing he wanted to do. Technically, thought Lanie, he wouldn't be getting _back_ to anything, as the first thing he'd done after coming into work with bags beneath his eyes after staying up half the night having Ryan beat him at Madden was stumble into the morgue to say good morning to her.

"Why do you have to have such an important job?" she complained, cocking her head as if she were actually asking.

"Mm, I'll quit," he said, kissing her again. "The two of us could run off the Barbados, open up a surf shop."

"Now you're just being silly," she laughed, kissing him once more. "Alright, get back to your real life job, and I will too. I need to make sure these bullets are ready to send to ballistics."

"We still on for our lunch date?" he asked, toying with the ends of her hair.

"Of course."

"Okay." With heavy shoulders and exaggerated slowness, he tromped away towards the elevator. She smiled after him, then turned to the table.

"That's weird."

"What?" asked Esposito, turning back around, eager for any chance to stay there.

"The bullets aren't here," said Lanie, poking around and moving aside her microscope, searching. She was sure she'd set the trays containing the bullets that had been lodged in David Zeitz's chest down on the table right in front of her, but now they were gone.

"What the hell?" said Esposito, baffled.

"I might've misplaced him," she guessed, hoping he wouldn't get worked up over nothing. After all, bullets didn't just walk out of morgues, and she would have noticed if someone had just strutted in and stolen them. "Maybe Perlmutter sent them up already."

"Okay, call me if they don't turn up," he said.

"I will," promised Lanie. "Bye."

"See you." He left the morgue and stepped into the elevator doors. As soon as he was gone, she heard the rustling of a moving person coming from behind her. Before Lanie could turn to see who was there, a strong hand came up over her mouth and a dark bag dropped over her head.


	9. Chapter 9

Esposito slid into the bullpen for the day, hoping that it appeared he'd just arrived at the precinct and hadn't gone down to the morgue first. He looked around- no cardboard cups of coffee on Beckett's desk, which meant Castle hadn't gotten there yet. Beckett's jacket was draped over the top of her chair, so he guessed that she was in the break room or something. Hopkins' desk looked as vacant as it had last night, and Ryan was just setting up at his desk.

"Hey," said Esposito, arriving at his ex-partner's desk. Ryan nodded in greeting.

"Trying to trace Tramm's computer records back to any interactions with Amazon," he explained, clicking away at the computer mouse. Esposito sighed and leaned against the desk.

"I kind of hate trying to solve this without you," he admitted. He'd enjoyed Madden last night with Ryan, but the downside of a good few hours of gaming was realizing that, when it ended, they had to go back to real life. The game was over, and they had to face reality, and reality wasn't too pleasant at the moment.

"I'm helping," said Ryan, defending himself.

"It's just weird," Esposito elaborated. "And Hopkins gets annoying." This was true. Not that he hadn't improved exponentially within hours of becoming Esposito's partner- he had. The problem was, there was an enormous gap between annoying and tolerable, and Hopkins hadn't crossed it even halfway.

"Hey," he said, turning to face Esposito, "if this whole wheelchair thing is keeping you from solving the case, then I might as well quit."

"What?" said Esposito. "Don't do that, I'm just saying I think it would be easier to solve if I was back here with you instead of out there with him." He said it matter-of-factly, letting loose all the things he'd been wanting to say but had kept held back, because they sounded weak and unprofessional.

"What are you talking about?" said Ryan, surprising Esposito by getting angry. "You can walk, you can get out of here." Ryan shoved away the disturbing and sudden image of a damsel in distress locked in a tower, and was thankful not for the first time that mind-reading was impossible.

"It'd be better if I stayed here," said Esposito.

"The hell it would!" Ryan argued. "Why would you stay back here if you could leave?"

"Maybe to stop you from doing idiotic things like _breaking up_ with your _fiancée_?"

"-told you, I've got the issue, not you."

"And it would help if you stopped trying to live vicariously through me-"

"Vicariously? Through _you_? You're too squeamish to sit on a used couch!"

"Well, at least I'm not thinking about furniture while I'm solving a murder!"

"Trying to! You can't even get around your dead ends."

"Well it's not my fault all our suspects clear out just in time to evade us!"

"You're right," said Ryan, his tone shifting suddenly. They'd been at the point of yelling, but now Ryan was quietly intense, stumbling upon a theory.

"Wait, what?"

"It's not your fault that all your suspects manage to skip out in the nick of time," continued Ryan, slowly. "So whose fault is it?" Someone was tipping off anyone connected to the David Zeitz case- someone close.

"Who on the case can't we trust?" said Esposito.

"New guy," Ryan suggested.

"I'm calling IA." Esposito grabbed the phone and had started dialing to reach the Internal Affairs office in the precinct. Before he was finished dialing, they heard the sharp rapping of Kate Beckett's heels approaching them.

"Hey, have you seen Lanie?" she called to them. Esposito fumbled with the phone.

"I- I'm not seeing Lanie," he said, mishearing her. Ryan and Beckett stifled laughs.

"Is she not in the morgue?" asked Ryan, sobering and facing Beckett. She shook her head.

"It looks like she was in the middle of working," she said. "I don't know why she'd leave." Her voice faltered with worry, but Esposito and Ryan were even more worried. They were pretty sure they knew what was going on.

Ryan's desk phone rang in Esposito's hand. He abandoned the interrupted IA call and tossed the phone to Ryan, who held it up to his ear. "Detective Ryan."

"Hey, Legless," said a familiar voice on the other end of the call, twisted with menace. Ryan glanced up at Esposito, who understood immediately and began tracing the call. "Don't bother trying to keep me talking so you can trace the call- I'll talk. You and your non-partner come and let us lock you up, and you let us get out of town. You will forget this whole event, and we will walk with the money."

"Not likely, Hopkins," said Ryan.

"Oh, I didn't think you'd come for me," said Hopkins, his voice lilting in a way that made the hairs on the back of Ryan's neck stand up. The guy was evil, and all the more so for tricking them into thinking he was as harmless as a domestic pet. "Figured you'd be a hell of a lot more interested, though, knowing who I've got." There was what sounded like a muffled kick, a pause, and then another. Silence.

"Um… who?" said Ryan confused. There was another rustle, the clink of metal- probably a gun – and then an extremely familiar whimper. "Jenny!" he yelled into the phone, his knuckles white where he gripped the desk. The room swam before his eyes.

Esposito nodded, signaling that he'd gotten the location, but he wasn't sure that Ryan saw it, lost in anguish and fury as he appeared to be. Esposito and Beckett stood there watching him, both feeling equally helpless. These people had Jenny and Lanie. _Lanie_. Esposito's fist clenched, almost of its own accord.

"See you soon," said Hopkins. "Fifth floor." There was a click as he hung up.

"You got the address?" said Ryan. Esposito nodded, tapping a pad of paper. "Alright, let's go," he said, trying to stand up. Beckett rushed around the desk and forced him back into his wheelchair.

"I'm with him; we're going," said Esposito.

"Hang on, guys," said Beckett, holding out her hands like she was trying to hold them back. "I can see that you're both very upset-" they nodded simultaneously in a way that clearly said they thought it was an understatement "-but we all need to keep a clear head and do this the right way."

"Beckett, they're hurting her," said Ryan, his voice shaking. She nodded, biting her lip and trying not to feel thankful that she hadn't strictly been involved in the case. She'd called Castle in the elevator and he was fine. Lanie was her best friend, and she was terrified. She didn't want to know what it would feel like if Castle were being held hostage.

"Jenny and Lanie are going to be fine," she said. It took an enormous effort to keep her voice neutral and calm.

"We couldn't trust Hopkins, we can't trust anyone else," said Esposito. Ryan nodded in agreement. Beckett noticed how they didn't hesitate to trust each other and her, and that fact oddly moved her in this moment of distress.

"Okay," said Beckett, "Esposito and I will vest up and go get them back."

"No way," said Ryan. "I'm coming with you." The words exactly echoed what he'd said almost a year ago in the parking lot, when Esposito was on his way to come face-to-face with another traitorous cop. "And if you don't take me, I'll just go on my own, and I know you don't want me going through the streets without anyone."

"Thought you said the wheels were off," said Esposito. Beckett glanced back and forth between the two of them, confused.

"Wheels aren't coming off," said Ryan. "Not ever." Esposito smiled and came behind Ryan to push his wheelchair out from behind the desk.

"Okay," said Beckett, "for the record, I have no idea what you guys are talkin' about." With that, the three of them headed out to face what could very well be the end of the line.

* * *

><p>Hopkins was keeping Jenny and Lanie held hostage in a vacant hotel, kept empty while renovations were being performed on it. Esposito and Beckett had run up into the hotel after ordering Ryan to stay in the car and not to come up. They were wearing bulletproof vests, but those didn't make any of them feel any safer.<p>

The elevator was down, so they took the stairs, pounding up the cement steps. Esposito's feet fell into a rhythm up the five flights of stairs, each step a syllable. Lanie Lanie Lanie Lanie Lanie Lanie. If this ended badly… no. It _would not_ end badly.

They checked a few rooms on the fifth floor before they found the right one- they could hear movement coming from within. The door was unhinged. The two of them leaned against the wall beside the doorway, unsure of whether they should go in shooting.

"Come on in," came Hopkins' voice from the door. "I know you're out there." Beckett glanced at Esposito, nodded, and the two of them went in with their guns held out, aiming. Hopkins immediately pointed his gun straight at Beckett's head, and she in turn held hers aimed at him. Skunk was standing behind Lanie, who was tied to a chair, and Tramm behind Jenny, who was in the same position as Lanie. Both held guns to their captives. "I said the cripple and his non-partner," said Hopkins, eyes narrowed.

"Stubbed my toe last night," said Esposito.

"And technically I'm not his partner," said Beckett, raising an eyebrow. Esposito was glaring at Skunk, finger on the trigger of his gun. "Esposito," she said in a low tone, glancing around the room.

"That's right," said Hopkins. "You're outnumbered. Shoot my associates and save the girls, I kill your detective. Shoot me and one of them, one of your girls dies." Esposito blinked, processing the situation and trying to control his rage. He thought that it was both a bad thing and a very, very good thing that Ryan had stayed in the car.

* * *

><p>There was no way Ryan was going to stay in the car.<p>

As soon as they were gone, he pulled a Castle, leaning out without the help of his wheelchair and managed to brace himself on the hood of the car. He waited a minute or so until a woman holding an umbrella walked by. "'Scuse me, can I borrow this?" he said, grabbing the umbrella. "Thanks."

"Wait," she said, startled. "I need that, it's about to rain."

"Hurry home," he said, balancing himself on the umbrella. "This is official police business." Frazzled, but not wanting to get mixed up in the police, she walked away, watching the sky warily. Using the stolen umbrella as a cane, Ryan walked laboriously into the hotel, and through the door marked as the entrance to the stairs. His knee hurt, but it felt good to be upright again.

He looked up at the stairs, winding on and on, and remembered that he had to go to the fifth floor. "Hard to get to," he sighed, trudging up. "That's a fact."

* * *

><p>"It's kind of like that one riddle," Hopkins was saying, gun unwavering from Beckett. "With the boat, the fox, the chicken, and the chicken feed. You can't take them all across the river. So just let us walk away." They showed no signs of doing so. He glanced at Esposito and Beckett, Jenny and Lanie. "So who are you going to leave behind? The cop? What about the ME, you don't really need her, you've got that deadpan Perlmutter." Esposito practically growled. "Oh, but that's right," said Hopkins, sickening. "You two have a thing going."<p>

"How… how did you know that?" said Esposito.

"Everyone knows!" said Beckett and Hopkins in unison.

And then, suddenly, a gunshot from around the corner of the doorframe. Tramm van Horn slumped forward, blood spraying from a bullet hole straight through his skull. "Riddle solved," said Ryan.


	10. Chapter 10

"_Mal: Well look at this. 'Pears we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us?  
>Zo<em>_ё__: Big damn heroes, sir.  
>Mal: Ain't we just." – Mal and Zo<em>_ё__, __Firefly_

"_Bullet in the brainpan, squish." – River, __Serenity_

"_After striking the cranium the bullet was moving at 900 feet per second, a pathetically sluggish, glacial pace compared to the synaptic lightning that flashed around it." –Tobias Wolff, "Bullet in the Brain"_

Caught in a suspended moment in time, Tramm fell back, a thousand memories and ideas flickering through his brain as the bullet sliced through. It was true, then- his life was flashing before his eyes. In less than a millisecond, he understood and was awed that the cliché turned out to be true.

He saw his childhood fade into his teen years, his days working in Technologists for Tomorrow- the school's junior computer club. His college days, sitting in the library with Victoria and talking about how together they were going to rule the world someday. And he remembered the day he had to say goodbye to her, and how it had changed him.

He relived the night he'd broken into the National Museum Complex, and been confronted and stopped by his old friend. He felt the shame and the terror of jail once again, and the relief of being allowed to stay in his own home. He remembered Googling how to get out of an ankle bracelet, finding the answer, and breaking out after getting the call from Hopkins.

He heard two gunshots outside his memories, and then he became a memory himself.

* * *

><p>"Jenny!" Ryan lunged forward while Hopkins and Skunk fell to the floor, nursing their new wounds. He abandoned his makeshift cane at the door, and crumpled to the floor before he reached Jenny. Esposito helped him to a sitting position while Beckett untied Jenny and Lanie. Esposito grimaced upon seeing Ryan's left knee.<p>

He'd busted it again trying to run forward, and it appeared ripped and bloody. "Kev, your knee-"

"It's not important," he said, waving him off, but the way he clenched his jaw in pain indicated that it was actually very important. "Did you cuff Hopkins and Skunk?"

"On it," said Castle, coming through the doorway, followed by Captain Montgomery. He glanced around at Beckett, Ryan, and Esposito. "Okay, all three of you just did double-takes. Does that make it a sextuple-take?"

"Just handcuff Hopkins," said Beckett after a moment of awkward silence, already doing so to Skunk. Castle knelt to do the same to the ringleader of the escapade.

"Castle found the note saying where you were on Ryan's desk," explained Montgomery, looking at them sternly. "Exactly what happened here?"

"We'll explain later," said Esposito, standing up and letting Jenny get closer to her fiancé. "Ryan needs an ambulance."

* * *

><p>The second it could be ascertained that Ryan was safely going through his second surgery in the past month, Esposito began to enthusiastically welcome Lanie back to safety. From across the room, Castle gave the two of them an amused glance and said to Beckett, "You think they realize we can see <em>that<em>?"

She laughed a little. "I hope so." She ran her fingers through her hair and leaned closer to Castle, subconsciously tucking herself into him in a way that made her feel both safe after the hectic day and traitorous for abandoning her strict limits when it came to Castle.

"So what exactly happened in that hotel?" asked Castle, turning to her. In doing so, he unintentionally brought his face within centimeters of hers and, feeling awkward, had to sit back. "I have the slightly disappointed feeling that I missed a good showdown." She laughed.

"I suppose from an insane writer with a lack of any self-preservation, it did seem pretty exciting," she admitted.

"Tell me about it," he insisted. She bit her lip and pretended to contemplate, knowing it would drive him crazy. It did. "Oh, come on, you're holding out on me!"

"Okay," she sighed. "So, Ryan and Esposito figured out that Hopkins was tipping off our suspects."

"I knew it," exclaimed Castle. She raised an eyebrow.

"You knew that Esposito's partner was a psycho and yet you withheld that knowledge from us?" she said. He recoiled and tried to think of a way to rephrase what he'd just said.

"I meant… in a strictly intuitive… just get on with the story."

"If you'll let me," she said. "Anyway, Hopkins and his associates took Jenny and Lanie and held them at gunpoint in this old abandoned hotel as a way to lure Ryan and Esposito there, and told them he'd let the girls free in exchange for us all shutting up and forgetting about David Zeitz and the Amazon scheme, and letting them all run off. Well, we weren't going to do that, so Esposito and I went up to stop them while Ryan was _supposed _to stay in the car. So we're up in the room and the guys have us outnumbered, no way we'd be able to stop them without one of ours dying."

"And then," said Esposito, sitting down beside them and getting in on the heroic storytelling, "Detective House over there comes limping in on an umbrella, shoots the guy holding Jenny, Beckett and I shoot the other two and they're all down in a second. It was awesome."

"Sorry I wasn't there," said Castle, sounding as though he was more sorry he'd missed out on all the action.

"Actually, as it turns out that was a good thing," said Beckett. "If you'd been there, Ryan never would have had to drag himself up five flights of stairs and never would've hurt his knee again. We had to rush him to the nearest hospital, and these people here…" She paused, marveling at the nature of coincidence and the very real possibility of miracles. "Well, they do a rare procedure, kneecap replacement surgery."

"Ryan's going to walk again," said Esposito, sounding as though he were attempting to not let any mistiness leak into his voice. "And run. We're going to be partners again."

"It's a good day," said Beckett. "Good day." She leaned back against the wall, without realizing it balancing herself even closer to Castle. She thought about moving, but then realized how ridiculous and useless it would be. She was exhausted- it was barely noon and yet she'd gone through a lot today. She'd spent the last almost month fighting against betraying how she'd really felt kissing Castle, and the last three years fighting against betraying how she really felt any time she was _around _Castle. For just a moment, she'd like to relax, and to let herself feel comfortable.

"So you didn't even videotape it or anything?" asked Castle, almost whining. Beckett just laughed and rolled her eyes.

* * *

><p>Shadows danced across the insides of Ryan's eyelids like some distorted puppet show. Fluorescent light filtered in between his crusted eyelashes. Soon enough he came to realize that he was conscious, and that there was no point in keeping his eyes shut any more. He opened them, blinking against the sudden bright light as the world blurred into focus.<p>

There was Esposito, sitting across the room drumming his fingers anxiously on the arm of his chair. He stood up as soon as he realized that his partner was awake and crossed the room in a panic. "Ryan-"

"Ferris Bueller you're my hero," Ryan quipped blearily, mainly because he knew it would annoy Esposito. It did. He huffed and braced his arms on the side of the hospital bed.

"I can't even hit you for that or anything," sighed Esposito, smiling. "You know how bad off that's gotta make you?" Ryan laughed and glanced up at the table held over his cot. It was empty.

"Can you go get me some pudding or something?" he asked. As soon as he said it, he realized that it would've made a lot more sense to ask to see Jenny, to hold her and know that she was okay and let her know that he was okay. He did want to see her- he always wanted to see her. It was just that in this instance, he knew that both of them already knew everything they'd tell each other if they were together. And he was starving.

"Go get it yourself," said Esposito. The brotherly-sounding command wasn't rational, and it didn't make a whole lot of sense. At the moment, Ryan still couldn't walk. But they were both aware that soon he'd be able to, without assistance.

Ryan wouldn't be needing a wheelchair any more. He had another set of wheels to hold him up.


	11. Chapter 11

"_Oh, I could always walk. I've been faking it." – Jerome, __Gattaca_

"'_There is nothing wrong,' said Fenchurch, 'with my left knee.'" – Douglas Adams, __So Long and Thanks For All the Fish_

**SIX MONTHS LATER**

"Now introducing to the floor, for the first time ever, Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Ryan."

Across the room, Castle and Beckett clapped and clinked glasses. "They make a cute couple," said Beckett, watching Ryan and Jenny spin onto the dance floor.

"Cute?" said Castle. "They're adorable." He smiled at her from over the rim of his champagne glass. "You know," he added, setting the glass down, "seeing as it is his wedding day, we should really contribute to Ryan winning that bet."

"What bet?" she asked.

"He bet Esposito that you and I would hook up at his wedding," said Castle, shrugging matter-of-factly. Beckett raised an eyebrow, smirking.

"Get me another glass of champagne," she said. "Then we'll talk."

In the opposite corner of the room, Lanie was encountering some difficulty with dragging Esposito away from the table laden with the four-tiered wedding cake. He'd been standing there staring at it with yearning in his eyes practically since the reception had begun. "Come on, we should go talk to Kate," said Lanie, actually grabbing his arm and attempting to tug him, to no avail.

"She's fine, she's with Castle," he said, not tearing his gaze away from the cake. "Look, I could just swipe some frosting off the top, no one would notice."

"That cake is for Ryan and Jenny to cut," said Lanie. "It's ceremonious."

"It's stupid," said Esposito, finally allowing her to lead him away. "At our wedding we'll have a second cake that anyone can eat whenever they want."

"We're not paying for two cakes," she said. "Do you know how expensive one of those is?"

"You could make it," he suggested.

"Right," she laughed as they stepped onto the dance floor to join the other couples, "because everyone wants to eat a cake that was baked by someone who handles dead bodies every day."He laughed and twirled her past Ryan and Jenny, who were discussing Jenny's name.

"What's wrong with Jenny Ryan?" asked Ryan as they swayed to the music.

She shrugged. "I just think it's important that I keep my identity even now that I'm married," she said. "I could hyphenate my last name."

"So…" said Ryan, thinking, "you'll be Jenny Duffy-O'Malley-Ryan?" She nodded. "It's very long."

"And very Irish," she added, laughing, as he twirled her. "Where'd you learn to dance so well?"

"After the surgery, they gave me the option of either intense, painful physical therapy or ballroom dancing class," he said. She laughed and leaned her head against his shoulder.

"I love you," she whispered.

"That's a good thing," he whispered back, "because otherwise we just got married for no reason." She smacked him playfully, then leaned her head back against his shoulder. There would be enough stress later- always was- but for now, there was nothing but the two of them in this beautiful place, matched step-for-step, flawless.

Somehow, amidst all the waves of congratulations and dancing and hugging relatives, Ryan found himself sitting on a bench near the back of the reception hall with Esposito. "Nice shindig," said Esposito, leaning back. His partner laughed and sipped from the bottle in his hand.

"Where did I get this?" he asked suddenly, holding it out in front of him. "I don't even remember deciding to serve beer at the wedding."

"You're drunk," laughed Esposito. Ryan shrugged.

"So? I'm a grown-up now," he defended. "Even got married, you know."

"Might've seen something about that on Facebook or something," joked Esposito. "Seriously, though, congratulations, Ryan."

"You're gonna have to stop calling me that," said Ryan, shifting a bit awkwardly as if he hadn't meant to say what he'd just said. Esposito stared.

"You didn't." Ryan said nothing. "You're taking your wife's name?" He rocked back and forth on the bench, laughing raucously.

"Thank-you," said Ryan drily, "for backing me on this." Esposito just kept laughing. "Also," he added as an afterthought, "thank-you for calling her my wife. I like hearing it."

"Whatever, Honeymilk," said Esposito, taking a big swig from his own beer. It was nice to know that he could still antagonize Ryan, even after all that had occurred.

"It's not like it's an irrational decision," he argued. "I balanced out the benefits and the negative consequences of taking Jenny's last name, and the pros outweigh the cons." He sounded like he was trying to prove a point that had already been lost a long while ago. "No one will get confused and think Ryan is my first name now. _And_, I'll get a bright shiny new… what's it called, those things, those name blocks that go on desks?"

"Name blocks," shrugged Esposito.

"Yes!" said Ryan. "Thank-you." He took another unnecessary sip of his beer.

"Hey…" said Esposito cautiously, looking out at the rest of the ballroom, "I think Lanie and Jenny just started talking to each other." Ryan jumped up, and the two of them made their way across the floor quickly. It had been a known fact, ever since a disastrous double date a few months ago, that Lanie and Jenny _did not_ get along well. They felt compelled to split up the impending chaos.

And, as always, they were a team in this. Be it snipers, torture, or arguing significant others, Ryan and Esposito could get through anything together.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Or so they thought… just kidding. The end! Hoped you all liked it. Please review with thoughts on the story and how I ended it. (Or thoughts on the finale :D ) I'm not sure what my next multichap fanfic will be, but I'm pretty sure it'll be Caskett-based. **


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